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Details :
Category: Murder
Location: Soham, Cambridgeshire, England
Date: August 4, 2002
Crime: Serving life in prison for the murders of two ten-year old girls
(Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman) whom he had lured into his home as they were walking past after a trip to a local market. Known as the Soham Murders, this case remains one of the highest profile murders in the U.K. in recent years.
Biography: Ian Kevin Huntley was born on January 31, 1974 in Grimsby, England. His school age years were marked by incessant bullying and at the age of 13, it had gotten so bad, he had to be transferred to a different school. He left school in 1990 and worked at a variety of unskilled positions with low pay. During the 1990's, he was investigated by the police on ten different occasions for rape, sex with a minor, indecent assault and burglary. He was brought up on charges twice, but in both instances the charges were dropped. In November 2001, using an assumed name of Ian Nixon, Huntley applied for and was given the position of caretaker at a secondary school in Soham. On the evening of August 4, 2002, Huntley had gotten into a heated argument with his live-in girlfriend over the phone after he accused her of cheating. After slamming down the phone, Huntley saw two 10 year old girls walking past his rented house. Knowing that they were students at the school where his girlfriend worked, he coaxed them inside and killed them. Huntley disposed of the girls bodies by throwing them into a ditch, some 20 miles away and setting them on fire. In the mean time, Huntley's girlfriend returned to the cottage and helped Huntley clean up any evidence of what had taken place there. A little less than two weeks later, the girls soccer shirts were found in a dumpster at the college where Huntley worked and within 13 hours of that discovery, their bodies were found in the woods. During the trial, Huntley admitted that the girls had died in his house, but claimed that both deaths were accidental. The jury rejected those claims and returned a guilty verdict. While serving his life sentence, Huntley has survived an attack in 2005 by another prisoner with boiling water. Then in 2006, Huntley attempted to commit suicide by overdosing on pills. In January, 2008, he was moved to a different facility for long-term prisoners and those of notoriety.
Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman
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